Concerning Piracy and the $8 Argument

[Enerla]

mrdewdew: Yes. People purchased it at a SALE. But think about what you said for a moment.

The developers were frustrated because from tens of thousands of people only a few hundred bought it. It was their post, their statement. And they said they spoke about how little $8 is. And I said that argument wouldn’t make people buy their game. And it didn’t. People who bought it, bought for other reasons. That argument didn’t help much, but had a chance to hurt a little.

My point was: $8 isn’t a selling point, because they can get better games at $8. We both see this. It is one reason against buying a new game at $8.

Of course there are other reasons as well. Like some people only buy games at a sale because that is a wise decision. So there is another reasons why people didn’t jump when dev told them to buy it because it is only $8. Which is an extremely valid point, and one more point that shows why the $8 argument won’t make those people buy at full price.

Some of your argument is that $8 isn’t much. And I wholeheartedly agree with that. But know what I would add: the $1.99 difference between $8 and $9.99 is even less. Probably not a lot of people would choose a game because it is $2 cheaper. They would choose the game if it would fit in their budget. This difference isn’t a selling point. The devs can speak about the story and sell the game, but if they speak about the price they won’t.

Of course there are numerous other reasons as well. I pointed to risk. A new game with questionable support which can be unfinished after the demo part, etc. is a risk. But buying a 2 months old game is far less risky. So a lot of people who didn’t buy early had a valid reason. But maybe they have bought later.

I could also point to how the developers and their friends there react when people don’t agree with them. Your reactions included. I am sure in the original argument there were similar reactions as well. And I am sure a lot of people doesn’t remember this developer fondly.

We could speak about other points. Like family budget, where you can only spend limited amount of money on your entertainment. You buy the most important stuff first, and for the rest there is time to compete for the change. And look at the competitors at that time… At that time gaming on mobile was already spreading quickly and there were a lot of good titles under $1. So competition for the change was rather fierce.

We could name tons of reasons. Like people who don’t like serious business simulation often doesn’t check “tycoon” games, but people who are fond of that genre often want to focus on that. While developers wanted to tell a story.

Or like that some people only buy software at big sites as they have fears about security of smaller stores, etc. Behind both disappointing and surprisingly strong sales there are always several different reasons. I have experienced both first hand.

But I am sure that if you argue about your game is only $8, that wouldn’t accelerate sales.

[Enerla]

Strange. I haven’t accused others with crimes they didn’t commit. Wait that was the developer team.

Strange, I haven’t resorted to personal attack only posts without on topic reasoning. Wait that was most of the people there.

I fact I learned one very important thing from this: Is people complain in a blog posts because they aren’t successful enough leave them lose out. Don’t offer advice because people will only flame you. After all people who want to do better and want to make a living, want success can ask for advice before they are starting to complain. People who are complaining already decided to blame others for their failures / lack of planned success. And often this attitude they accept / support is a bigger problem than the easy to spot marketing ones. And it is far harder to fix this.

You don’t want the developers to have more success next time, you want to defend the decisions that led them to making a post about how they haven’t sold enough copies.

[Charlie]

Everyone is entitled to their own ‘opinion’ and that is all these comments are. ‘Opinions’. Therefore please keep this thread civil. You have all done well so far.
Please do not report this this thread unless it breaks any obvious rules. Thank you guys

[Haxor]

Oh god, I thought you will explode and hammer everyone…

thank god you didn’t

[FireChaos]

Because I wouldn’t waste 1 hour to this discussion, I’ll just drop something and express my opinion about the current game industry.

Greenheart’s Game Dev Tycoon is their first game. To me it achieved much and I spent much more time than I think. Greenheart stopped updating the game with new content because they are working on another project. That’s why they introduced modding, as well as Steam Workshop support.

Game Dev Tycoon is the first game I tried to mod. With really basic knowledge of JavaScript, I created a somewhat successful mod, as the feedback says. Sadly I don’t have much time to update.

Maybe the Indie companies may not make games like GTA or CoD, or Battlefield etc… but it’s their first stable try to improve their lives. Sure, it won’t be really amazing, but some first games are rare. Like this one, or Don’t Starve. The big companies, release unfinished games to the market for money. Because they started not to care. 8 bucks is not bad for a game. Why should it? Would you rather pay 50-60 for an awesome 3D graphics Story game with tons of bugs like the New Assassin’s Creed? I wouldn’t. For me, Some of these rare games are special and neverending fun. Did I mention Terraria? A Sandbox game which I spent ~550 hours even before the 1.2 update? That’s right. Some indie companies know what they’re doing, because they planned it, discussed it, and questioned it.

Concluding, I think that every game is special in its own way, even if it’s Game Dev Tycoon, or Team Fortress 2, or Skyrim, or anything else you can think of. Every developer has for sure put effort into making it. Negative comments/feelings are stronger than the positive ones.

That’s what I had to say.

[Enerla]

Some indie games are great. Should I remind you how Stardock decided to enter the games market with Galactic Civilization? I am sure my steam client will be quite busy with that game, as some early preorders got a side benefit of having access to all DLCs and expansions for it…

Should I point to Eador? Which is better than several AAA titles.

You named some games you have enjoyed. And some others became massive hits Should I point to Minecraft. But that had plenty of new and fresh ideas. The problem is: Game Dev Tycoon used an old concept, and has a title that suggest a tycoon game (business simulation of the more serious kinds) instead of a name that speaks about the story. The developers quote a famous game designer. But they forget to add, that after some Railroad Tycoons that aimed at complexity we had a Railroads! from the same designer. You see the difference?

The issue isn’t with indie games…

[Cazran]

If you don’t like, why you here?

[Enerla]

Cazran: I am sure it was explained before: Because the forum is about both gaming in general, the developers of the game, and the game itself. And I am sure even fair judgement of the game is only possible if both positive and negative thoughts are heard. And the $8 argument posted by developers should be best discussed on their page. And often people show that “most PC gamers still pirate the game” and pointing to GDT after creative DRM and after the argument is quite common speech against the PC platform.

Right now the question is: PC and cellphone markets are both quite significant, with hundreds of millions having access to PCs, and mobile devices. Yet piracy (with rooting, and jailbreak for mobile) are often attributed to these platforms. I am sure if the developers and publishers of this game try to make a statement about the issue, and it is often discussed then we should debate it here and now.

What they have reported was over 20000 illegal users of software for around 300 customers. I am sure things changed a lot, since pirates stopped playing the game, and with time people bought the game. Yet most of the argument is about this simple thing: Even if a published who is small enough who haven’t mistreated you before, organizations say 1.5% people buy the game, 98.5% didn’t and speak about the tricks, etc. done there as a positive example.

Yet I am sure this approach is flawed for 6 reasons.

1. For profitability your sales counts. If people doesn’t buy your game new, that is a lost opportunity to make profit. And consoles are infested with a market for used games
2. The post often quoted is about right after the release. Later more people bought it, and Steam, etc. added more sales.
3. They claim that the $8 pricing is an price that would drive sales. Yet most people wouldn’t see it as that, as they can get better games for lower price.
4. A lot of people wouldn’t buy games at initial full price… They wait for discounts. Yet they are customers on the long run.
5. People often get burned by new indie games. If you talk about price and tell them they should buy right now, before giving anyone a chance to see user reviews, etc. -> You end up in an argument and it turn away potential customers.
6. More people would buy a better game. It isn’t important if you or me care about a flaw or limitation. As many people on the market surely will care about it. And if they do, that bends these numbers.

And on the long run: for PC you deal with piracy. On console with used games, borrowing, etc.

If a publisher / developer posts something on their web page about this sensitive matter, and the views shown there doesn’t represent the PC market, yet they are often quoted to attack the PC market, it is natural to discuss their blog post here. And not behind their back.

[Cazran]

There’s millions of other sites where you can write essays about games, IGN for example, why don’t you type it there? More games get pirated news there than anywhere else.

Or perhaps TPB?

[Enerla]

Cazran: I am not sure if you don’t want to understand and just want to be an offensive person, or you lack the brainpower to understand: At the sites you mentioned noone made an argument where they suggested some pirates should buy the game for $8. No other publisher though that price is a such selling point. IGN = Isn’t a source of arguments, it just reports what was said. Why would we discuss stuff with them, and not with the source. TPB? They are maintained by pirates and no discussion there with published.

No. When any main media outlet speaks about piracy, creative ideas to counter piracy is mentioned. GDT is mentioned. The post about how many people pirated the game is mentioned.

The point of the story: That 20000 people they seen played and haven’t bought. They got to the point where the specially prepared version of the game made them lose. And not a lot of them switched to the real game (bought or pirated). They decided they don’t wan’t to see the end of the game.

We can point to a lot of things. Like to Destructoid a 5/10… A 68% Metascore which shows it isn’t a good game. We can discuss and debate numerous small stuff. But in the end:

It is the very first game from these developers. When they designed how the game works, they had very very limited experience with game development and publishing. And they probably wasn’t around us as developers, not even as hobbyist developers in the era, when Amigas competed with IBM AT-s. And while their story can be interesting to the young who assume 3D games came a bit late, others actually remember that in the middle of 80s there were popular 3D games already.

We remember that basic CGA graphics for PC was quite challenging to make. Limited palette and resolution made it hard to create anything the player would recognize. A bit later VGA was much, much easier, with or without Mode X. In mode 13 (hexadecimal) it was pretty easy to do “wonders” and we even had access to scanned images. Better graphics wasn’t about gathering experience, then researching better graphics, and then creating a custom engine to base our games on.

Yes, with time we got more experienced and use the same hardware better and better. But changes often made certain skills obsolete. There were engines, for some point and click adventure games, or gold box RPGs. But I am sure often the games didn’t use a separate prewritten engine. Why? Because while some genres were focused on content, and technically similar games were a good idea… At other times subsequent games from the same developer were very different.

[PatrickKlug]

@Enerla

You are entitled to your own opinion. You are not entitled to your own facts.

Unfortunately, you repeatedly express your opinions as facts and constantly make assumptions about us, talk us (and our design decisions) down and generally tend to disagree with everything anyone says on the forum.

While we are happy to have constructive feedback and discussions, this simply does not fall in this category.

Frankly, this might be the wrong corner of the internet for you.

[Enerla]

Probably is still doesn’t mean it is certainity. But I can tell you in simple manner: Your fans said I should play your game before I judge it. I bought the game for this reason. My expectations was fairly low. Yet, your game managed to disappoint me even more.

Why? No meaningful story, while you pointed to telling a story. No turning points where there were in history. And with this even history wasn’t full revisited, very important points were missing.

We can only guess that led to 5/10 from Destructoid, and 3/10 from Eurogamer sweden. If you wanted scores like this, or if you expected better scores? I don’t know. But I know these scores.
If you wanted more sales from speaking about $8 price, etc. on forums, or just trolled? I don’t know. But I do know that your site has a blog that speaks how disappointed you were with amount of sales and amount of piracy.

I don’t know if you were honest when you spoke about making money before making good games. Or you would be able to make good games as you claim now. Either of those arguments from you aren’t honest. I don’t know which one.

Those are only guesses.

But the ratings I see are surprisingly low for any release that isn’t full of bugs. It speaks loud that people were unhappy with your design. And a lot more people were.

I bought your junk to judge you fairly. But how you handle the issue with “go away” type attitude is alarming. The trick is: You are free to say, you think the reason for low ratings, disappointed people are elsewhere. Your guesses can be pretty good. And when people pointed to sales I said he has a valid point, as people wait for sales regardless of price, so he had another explanation for low sales. What I don’t see? YOUR explanation about why Eurogamer sweeden gave you 3/10, why destructoid gave you 5/10, why majority of press reviews and disappointed players name the exact same problems with your game.

All I see is a “go away” attitude and personal attacks. Good. It speaks about your policy, and what kind of community you expect.

Yes. Assuming inexperience is an assumption. But you know what? I assume you are innocent till you prove yourself as guilty. But besides saying if you want to make money before you can make a much better game… I assume you were honest then, and you can’t make that better game then. And that you didn’t want to make a game that gets 3/10 from Eurogamer Sweden. Or 5/10 from destructoid. I assume you didn’t want to disappoint people. But this was what you was able to achieve due to your skills and experience.

Since that you claim everywhere that this assumption talks you down. That the assumption that would mean you could do a 9/10 game but you intentionally made the game worse and that is how you got lower sales, low ratings is the only stuff I should believe in. I should only believe in that you were a dick.

And you try hard to prove you are just that.

Now stop for a moment, and ask a simple question to yourself:

• Are the problems there because you couldn’t make the game better, but you would want to create good games?
• Or are the problems there because even if you could do better, you didn’t want to, as you don’t want good reviews and don’t want to make customers happy, yet you expect they pay for your game anyway?

My only assumption is that the issues with game, that led to those ratings, etc. are honest mistakes on your part, and you hoped the game will be good. But if you say that is a false assumption and there is no place for this customer on this forum, then you are right.

Your game is bad. And with your attitude I won’t ever expect any good game from you. And even if it would happen I wouldn’t trust your support, etc. so there should be no point in buying that. And as you doesn’t want better games, there is no need to help you with that.

[PatrickKlug]

You cherry-pick two reviews to try to make an opinion into a fact. Well, I have more than 11 thousand counter arguments:

Regardless, not everyone will like our game. You clearly don’t. If you hate our game so much, write a bad review. It’s your right to have an opinion but you have no right to be on our forum and present your opinions as facts.